Even Without TicTok Trump Will Still Be Foolish

How to tick tack pic.twitter.com/1Mn8nk363f

— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) July 31, 2020

Trump has decided to ban Americans from access to the popular social media application, TicTok.  He claims the ubiquitous Chinese company owned application is being used by the Chinese government to spy on Americans.  As with most Trump statements, he has offered no evidence of his claim - possibly because none exists.  What we do know is that there is lots of evidence that Trump doesn't care at all about foreign government spying on the US.  He and his administration have repeatedly ignored basic security protocols.  There are a myriad of reports of security violations by Trump and members of the White House staff.  

These violations including sharing secret information with the Russian ambassador, Trump's use of an unsecure cell phone for government business, White House staff using personal email accounts for official business, holding crisis meetings in the public dining room at Mar-A-Lago and Trump speaking so loud (on speaker phone) that restaurant patrons from Kiev to DC could hear his conversation.

Clearly, national security has never been a big issue for Trump.  Let's face it, he remains quite comfortable having hostile foreign powers tamper with US elections, so there must be another reason for Trump's attack on TicTok.

Maybe the real issue is Trump's ego,  TicTok users were blamed for inflating the number of supporters clamoring to attend Trump's Covid-19 rally in Tulsa.  His campaign claimed that over one million "supporters" had requested free tickets to the event.  Those wildly optimistic estimates made the reality of the tiny crowd of six thousand that did show up a complete embarrassment for Trump.  

Even more of an ego deflator are the routine videos (originally on TicTok) from Sarah Cooper.  Cooper simply lip-syncs Trump's words in her videos.  Her facial expressions and occasional props like marker pens are sometimes combined with special effects such as the use of a hair dryer, but essentially it is Trump's own words that make him look foolish.  

Cooper, of course, is the actress and comedian who has come to Internet fame by posting videos of her lip syncing Trump's speeches and interviews to hilarious effect, whether it's him denying he retreated to the White House bunker because of a threat posed by protestors, dodging a question about what his favorite Bible phrases are, or, most memorably, recreating his now-famous “People, woman, man, camera, TV” interview. With more than half a million followers on TikTok, Cooper has been written up by The Hollywood Reporter, The Washington Post and The New York Times and appeared as a guest on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon and The Ellen Show. ("You make me so happy," Degeneres said). A profile in the Times of London was headlined: “How Sarah Cooper's Trump Takedowns Made Her America's New Comedy Hero."

Cooper's Trump is really the true image of the man.  With his own words, she holds up a mirror that allows us all to see Trump as the ridiculous, insecure and petty man that he is.  No wonder Trump wants to silence Cooper's use of his own words.